ABSTRACT

This volume draws together some of the key works of Nicholas Rengger, focusing on the theme of the 'anti-Pelagian imagination' in political theory and international relations.

Rengger frames the collection with a detailed introduction that sketches out this 'imagination', its origins and character, and puts the chapters that follow into context with the work of other theorists, including Bull, Connolly, Gray, Strauss, Elshtain and Kant. The volume concludes with an epilogue contrasting two different ways of reading this sensibility and offering reasons for supposing one is preferable to the other.

Updating and expanding on ideas from work over the course of the last sixteen years, this collection will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations theory, political thought and political philosophy.

chapter 1|9 pages

Introduction

Dealing in darkness? Varieties of modern anti-Pelagianism

chapter 2|10 pages

Progress

Kant, Mendelssohn and the very idea 1

chapter 3|15 pages

Bull

A double vision? 1

chapter 5|22 pages

Human rights

Emancipation or incarceration 1

chapter 6|16 pages

Dystopic liberalism and the international order

Realism tamed or liberalism betrayed? 1

chapter 7|8 pages

Progress with Price? 1

chapter 8|10 pages

Connolly

Nietzsche or Augustine? 1

chapter 9|13 pages

Gray

The end(s) of progress? 1

chapter 10|10 pages

Strauss

The impossibility of justice 1

chapter 11|10 pages

Elshtain 1

Anti-Pelagian or not? 1

chapter 12|12 pages

Elshtain 2

Violence and the two sovereigns 1

chapter 13|13 pages

Post-secularism

Metaphysical not political? 1

chapter 14|15 pages

Epilogue

Tragedy or scepticism? 1